Editors:
- Gives an exact description of the origin of matroid theory
- First English translation of the four German papers
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (14 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Life of Takeo Nakasawa
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South Manchurian Railway Company (1906–1945)
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The Road to the Fifteen Years War (1931–1945)
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The Fifteen Years War (1931–1945)
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Mathematics around Takeo Nakasawa
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Chronological Tables
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Works of Takeo Nakasawa
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Front Matter
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About this book
Matroid theory was invented in the middle of the 1930s by two mathematicians independently, namely, Hassler Whitney in the USA and Takeo Nakasawa in Japan. Whitney became famous, but Nakasawa remained anonymous until two decades ago. He left only four papers to the mathematical community, all of them written in the middle of the 1930s. It was a bad time to have lived in a country that had become as eccentric as possible. Just as Nazism became more and more flamboyant in Europe in the 1930s, Japan became more and more esoteric and fanatical in the same time period. This book explains the little that is known about Nakasawa’s personal life in a Japan that had, among other failures, lost control over its military. This book contains his four papers in German and their English translations as well as some extended commentary on the history of Japan during those years. The book also contains 14 photos of him or his family. Although the veil of mystery surrounding Nakasawa’s life hasonly been partially lifted, the work presented in this book speaks eloquently of a tragic loss to the mathematical community.
Editors and Affiliations
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Dept. Mathematics, University Tsukuba, Tsukuba Ibaraki-ken, Japan
Hirokazu Nishimura
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Passau, Germany
Susumu Kuroda
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: A Lost Mathematician, Takeo Nakasawa
Book Subtitle: The Forgotten Father of Matroid Theory
Editors: Hirokazu Nishimura, Susumu Kuroda
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7643-8573-6
Publisher: Birkhäuser Basel
eBook Packages: Mathematics and Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics (R0)
Copyright Information: Birkh�user Basel 2009
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-7643-8572-9Published: 16 January 2009
eBook ISBN: 978-3-7643-8573-6Published: 21 April 2009
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 236
Topics: History of Mathematical Sciences